set the dark on fire
by affability
Summary: The stars look scattered on the sky. Nate/Jenny.


**a/n: **My first Gossip Girl fic, and it's Nate/Jenny, which makes me a little nervous posting this. I have never written for this lovely couple before, and since I'm currently obsessed with them, I decided to write them. Jenny's an interesting character, hopefuly I did a decent job getting into her head, and honestly, she's misunderstood. Sorry if I didn't do them justice, I'll try harder next time. The quote below is from another one of my poems.

_._

_the maps you make,_

_the risks you take,_

_we go around the globe in one night,_

_and laugh under the blue, blue sky._

_._

—

It's funny — they banish her, and yet they don't make a fuss when she comes back. So she decides that when the sun comes out, she'll find it somewhere in her heart to get up and leave. She already did - once, several times, but she's never been able to really, you know, _leave; _hopping on a plane, leaving the place, starting a new life, and never coming back. Books closed, hands dusted.

But for some reason, something inside of her makes it impossible for her to not come back, looking for life, because her mind is filled with fairytale endings and castles in the air, and it makes her desperately want to believe that they, the happy endings and castles in the air and perfections, exist.

(And even if they do, she seriously doubts she'll find it in New York, but she'll take whatever she can get.)

So when Nate comes along and becomes her Knight in Shinning Armani, she can't help but be tempted to him - drawn, like a moth to a flame. There's just one flaw - he forgives her too easily. He forgives her for trying to break his relationship with Serena, for scheming and plotting, he still looks past the fatal flaws and sees the value in her—makes her feel.

Raindrops fall into heavy gushes, and she feels her mascara track down her dangerously pale face as she breathes out. Nate walks down the sidewalk, his hair wet from the heavy downfall and falling against his eyes, and she stares at him with empty eyes he holds his hand out wordlessly, and a blue flame in his eyes tells her that he never truly got over her.

He'll always be there to rescue her, to save her from whatever danger, and he's done it so many times she's sure she'll never be able to really pay him back. She takes his hand as she gets up, and she's thankful that he doesn't say anything about her not answering any of his calls or replying to his text messages.

Instead, he wraps his arm around her waist gingerly - a little too gingerly, almost as if he's scared of her, his soaked body cool against her own drenched one, as they past through the sidewalk and into his limo, the lights shedding through the window. He lets her lie next to him the entire ride, and her eyes close as he runs his hands through her wet hair.

And even though she knows it's wrong, she lets her hand slide beside him, and links their fingers together as she drifts to sleep.

—

She breathes out, her hands in the air, the sunshine blinding her vision slightly, and her bangs are getting in her eyes. The wind flirts with her hair, her black sundress sways, and the rings on her fingers make a sweet harmony. Her necklaces and bracelets are making a rhythm that sounds like a broken symphony, which makes her wonder what it means, symbolically.

She sits down, on the mat she has on the grass, and when Nate comes over, she has to shield her eyes as if she's looking directly at the sun. He sits beside her as she picks up a dandelion, blowing it, her eyes closing as a peaceful expression settles on her face.

And when she opens her eyes, Nate's looking at her, really _looking_ at her, past the dark nails and dark clothing, seeing what's left of the rarely shown, innocent side of Jenny Humphrey. And he almost smiles, but she's raising her eyebrows and suddenly that smile falters, but she can still see it in his eyes

—

Jenny recalls how living with her mom was; watching the grandfather clock in her mother's apartment tick, feeling strange about how empty and hollow the house sounded, and even though she seemed fine on the outside, her mother was breaking and spluttering on the inside, cracks were forming under the foundation, and it was all because she fell and lost.

It absolutely terrifies her and her heart races every time she thinks about it, because her mom forms into a different person everyday, changing, falling. She still remembers holding her mother couldn't feel her arms at the airport, and, besides Dan, she was all her mother had left.

She wonders if she'll become like her, scrapping through the obstacles, with denied wishes and different scars, with crashed hopes and hearts scattered on the floor. She breathes out as she looks at the scars on her arm that she's not sure magic can erase, and everything else just seems false and unreal, like water colored vision of her fairytale happy ending.

The moment Dan steps in her room, his eyes are wary, almost empty, and his hands are shaking slightly. She blinks up at him, and she's not sure whether she should fall into his arms and cry, or just stare at him blankly. He sits next to her, squeezing her hand gently, as he whispers _welcome back's_ and_ I missed you_.

Serena peers through the opened door, and Jenny feels her heart plunge, but she manages to avoid eye-contact with her and rest her head on Dan's shoulder gingerly, feeling her eyes sting as she breathes out and whispers, _I missed you, too_.

—

"Nate," she says, his name still feels beautifully foreign on her tongue, because she's still getting used to seeing him without assuming it's just wishful thinking or another one of her many dreams that haunts her constantly when she's away. "Nate, where are you taking me?"

He doesn't answer—or maybe he doesn't hear, but either way words aren't leaving his lips and he's not answering anything so she doesn't really bother waiting for an explanation. She rests her head against the window, counting the seconds silently as they pull over a place—it's dark, and there are benches under oak trees and flowers growing under fences.

At first, she wonders where she is, until she notices the concrete statue of an angel at the other side of the town, and then she remembers. She remembers dragging him out here, about a year or two ago, and remembers throwing cherries in her mouth and laughing when he fell over the basketballs lying on the grass.

"Remember that time you took me here?" he asks, and his voice sounds hollow, like an echo. Slight hurt flashes through her eyes and she nods, turning to face him but not managing to bring her to look into his eyes as she turns and looks at the sky.

The colors blend so beautifully together it almost looks unreal, because such flawlessness can't possibly occur in such a sin-drenched city, she figures. She also decides that even though seasons change, people don't always do, since she still reads Shakespeare and still dreams about happily ever after, and it's easy to pretend that nothing's broken.

"You wanted candles, but I liked the moonlight," he suddenly continues, and her heart plunges slightly. Even so, she knows what he's doing; he's trying to make her remember who she was, what she used to be, when all she really wants to do is forget.

New York is like a cage, and they're like trapped birds, barely able to escape or avoid it, despite the number of times she tried. She turns to look at him, her hands shaking. She doesn't know what to say, because everything seems wrong and barely anything seems right, but Nate blinks, and she says, "I wish I could forget."

He's silent for a while before replying, "Yeah, I know."

—

It's pouring so hard Jenny can barely see through her window, and she watches helplessly as she watches the raindrops fall into heavy gushes, looking like shattered sheets of glass landing on her windowpane and splattering in front of her eyes. She breathes out, feeling her heart beating, as she closes her eyes and runs her fingers across the frosty window.

Everyone's out of the house - Lily and Rufus are out, Serena's hanging out with Blair, and Jenny suspects that Dan is somewhere reading Shakespeare with a bunch of cabbage patch doll owning bookworms in a library not too far away.

She lies on her bed, closing her eyes, and listening to the sound of her heartbeat that assures her that she's still alive. Nate comes over, and he has all of her favorite movies with him.

At first she protests, being herself, but then she finally caves and they spend hours watching old movies from about a year ago, and they cringe as they run through the same, tired old jokes, and then Jenny looks at the mass of sketches she used to draw during her free time. Nate spots them - she knows he does, but he doesn't breathe a word, and she's almost deferred.

When he finally leaves, Jenny sits down on the scattered pieces of clothing on the floor, runs her manicured nails through every single one of them, and remembers each one which bears sweet and gruesome memories.

She leaves the house, just for a little while, and somehow she meets Damien at the bus stop, and he's eyes are heavy and are filled with experiences she knows nothing about. "Hi," he says, and he looks momentarily deferred when all she gives him is an expressionless stare with a tiny bit of irritation.

He rubs the back of his neck, and suddenly tensions are heavy, but she somehow manages to nonchalantly look at her bitten nails and peel the dark polish off. Damien sighs heavily, sitting next to her, as they watch the gushes of rain fall onto the ground and muffle the sounds of the sounds of the cars speeding across the road.

"You wanna get out of here?" he asks, holding his hand out once again. All of her instincts scream the same thing, focused on one word, repeating in her head and making her thousand thoughts scatter, and suddenly it's much harder to breathe.

_No_.

But she's changed, she doesn't trust herself anymore, her instincts, they all have failed her one way or another, and the name running around her head is not the guy in front of her, but the one whose always been there for her.

Regardless, she still gets up, tightens her coat, and then she grabs Damien's outstretched hand as he leads her to the way too familiar place that looms in the fog and midst.

—

While she can't recall the details, it's hard to forget the feelings of guilt and regret. She gets home from the dance party, her hands are shaking and she can't see straight, and she's glad she didn't have any drinks because she'd definitely feel a thousand times worse than she already does.

Jenny looks at the scattered newspapers all over the floor of her bedroom, on her nightstand, and she flicks the lamp on and off repeatedly.

She hears the door opening, but she can't bear to tear her eyes away from the words on the screen of her laptop that look to blurry too read, but she can still make out the words _Little J_ and _wild child_ and _unchanged_ and her hands start to shake, and she can't breathe for a brief second.

She sees a flash of blonde hair, and her hands shake. She turns to face Serena, who's staring at her lap, and Jenny suddenly finds the strength to close the page on her laptop. Serena presses her glossed lips together, and then she says, "You can't go on like this, Jenny. You... You're out of control. I..."

"Why do you care?" she snaps, the unexpected anger in her voice startling both of them. "I nearly ruined your relationship with Nate, I tried to break our parents apart, I tried to destroy your friendship with Blair, and I almost ruined your reputation by sending that picture of Juliet and Dan to Gossip Girl. You're supposed to hate me; you're supposed to _loathe_ me, so why are you giving me _advice_?"

Serena breathes in shakily. "Jenny," she begins, "While I can't entirely forgive you, I can understand why you tried to break Nate and I up. Love... makes you do crazy things, insane things, things you'd never imagine yourself doing in a million years, but here you are, doing them. At least you told Blair that it was Juliet, not me, with Dan in that picture."

"But—"

"I can't blame you, because every once in a while we all do things we aren't proud of, people make mistakes," Serena says, and Jenny has to bite her tongue to hold more spiteful words back. She hates how forgiving Serena can be sometimes, because she'd never be her, and then she realizes why everyone prefers Serena over her; she's twice the person Jenny will ever be.

Suddenly, she has the strange urge to hug her, but all she manages to do is soften her expression and bury her head in her pillow. "Thanks," she murmurs her tone bitter, but with underlying gratefulness. She hears Serena close the door on her way out.

—

The stars look scattered on the sky, the castles feel vandalized and stranded, and even her once beautiful crowns and gowns don't feel magical anymore.

She can't pretend to be something she's not, not anymore, with her eyes lined with eyeliner, nails darkened with black polish, eyelashes coated with mascara, and now she's just another lost girl floating in an ocean of grief with the taste of booze on her lips.

(Maybe she can still be saved).

Because when Nate's lips crashes onto hers, she closes her eyes and sees color and life, and there's a ray of hope burning inside of her, making her veins feel hot and her heart feel heavy.

She breathes out, and even though she's still sick with destruction, with issues written all over, her mind filled with broken fairytales and dreams reduced to _never_, she still has a little piece of that naive girl from Brooklyn inside her.

She hops over to the park, leaning over the white flowers and looking up at the blue sky, dark blue, dotted with colorless clouds and the grass is so bright and green Jenny's willing to look over the fact that they're tickling her back.

Nate finds her, somehow, she suspects that Serena tattled on her, but she doesn't really mind. She likes his company, and he slides his hand beside hers and links their fingers together, squeezing her hand. The colors blend together, the rays of blue and yellow, and her hair's spread across the yard and she can hear the faint sounds of birds chirping.

"Do you ever," she begins, her voice unnaturally soft, "I don't know... wish that you could stop time, even for a little while?" He doesn't answer for a long time, leaving the question hanging in the air, and she assumes that he's too consumed and distracted by the beauty of the park to acknowledge it.

"Yeah..." he finally says, and she squeezes her eyes shut. And then her heart thumps, her hands feel cold, as he leans over, his hair falling into his eyes as he shoots her a brief smile. "You wanna get some ice-cream?"

She feels the corners of her mouth form into a smile, "Yeah. I'd love that."

—

It's raining on the day she leaves.

She wonders what it means, symbolically, as she packs up her things. Her father hugs her so tightly she can barely breathe, and then her brother joins in on the hug, and she's laughing a little. She pulls apart, feeling her eyes water a little, her hands shake, and as she leaves, she turns and gives Serena one more hug.

It's still pouring as she drives to the airport, the raindrops falling like shards of glass, and the windshield wipers are barely helping at all. When she pulls over and walks into the airport, she sees Nate at the end of the line, and she has to blink a few times, assuming that it's just wishful thinking.

But it's not, he stares at her, his eyes heavy as he stands up, and she walks up to him, whispering, "What are you doing here?" He blinks, and then it takes her a second to divert her eyes away from his face and notice the suitcase standing right him. She pauses, absorbing everything she's seeing, and suddenly it's much harder to breathe as she stares at him.

"Nate," she whispers, and he looks at her, a small smile forming. "Didn't I tell you that whatever you decide, I'm with you?" She breathes out, looking at her shoes, and then bringing herself to look at him in the eye. But she can still feel his eyes on her, burning through her, looking into her green eyes and seeing into her.

"That was years ago," she reminds him, and he almost scoffs, as he says, "Still, it doesn't mean I'm not with you anymore. Jenny, I want to go with you, back to Hudson, or whatever. Given the chance, wherever you go, I'd follow you."

And then everything's moving in slow motion, she blinks, and then so many images are flashing before her eyes and she's furrowing her eyebrows together, her grip on her suitcase growing tighter and tighter as she hears the faint sounds of the clock behind her ticking.

"Why?" she finally asks after the achingly long silence, "Why would you do that?"

When he doesn't reply, she feels her heart beating in her chest, because she's afraid of the answer, afraid that he might start wondering. But he doesn't; not at all, he looks firm, and he looks at her, intently and past her facade, into the girl he met years ago, and she knows he knows that she's not gone, not completely.

He's seeing her for her, the real her, and the fact that he's able to see that absolutely terrifies her to no end. She has to gulp as he utters those three words, eight letters, and she's not even surprised. She saw it coming, and she's honestly not even the tiny bit shocked, she's absolutely terrified.

She's more surprised that her usually bright green eyes, framed with a layer of dark eyeliner, are darkened with wet tears that are about to slick down her pale cheek like an inglorious waterfall. She breathes in, and through her blurry vision, he looks like a water colored version of the prince charming in one of her many fairytale endings.

"I don't believe you," she says.

He steps forward, molding his eyes into hers, and his eyes are so green she's afraid to drown in them, so she blinks so many times her tears track down her cheeks, and he wipes them before repeating those three words, eight letters.

She has to sniff, and then she wipes the tracked mascara, looking up, and barely suppressing a smile. She doesn't say anything at first, but she walks towards his suitcase, carries it, and he stares at her.

He looks at her, and she breathes out, the loudspeaker announcing the flight, and she looks at him. The stars suddenly seem in place, and her broken heart doesn't seem so far away anymore, but her fairytale world isn't enough, she realizes.

She doesn't say it back, but she lets him follow her, back to Hudson, around the map in her head, wherever their hearts take them.

—

She links their fingers, and when she closes her eyes she sees life, real life, when she kisses him. She doesn't have to say_ I love you_ back to him, because she knows he knows, and when he kisses her a second too early on alter, she laughs. The world in her head never really do get fixed in her head, and the castles and knights never do come together, because she grew out of them.

But she leans into him later on, and when he kisses her, under the looming moonlight, she figures that _this_ - this is much, much better than any fairytale ending she has ever made up in her head, her home is much better than any castle, and that Nate is definitely better than any prince charming she has ever read about. She drifts off to sleep holding his hand, and suddenly, everything seems right, as they leave.

She watches their scars heal and feels her heart mending, falling back into place, as they leave the cage that had once trapped them. And now, for the first time, she's finally free.

—

_you're a star in the making,_

_and the cracks beneath your foundation, _

_stops breaking._


End file.
